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| Chapter VII
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Chapter VII.
Having, moreover, assumed that the Jews consider
the heaven to be God, he adds that this is absurd; finding fault with
those who bow down to the heaven, but not also to the sun, and moon,
and stars, saying that the Jews do this, as if it were possible that
“the whole” should be God, and its several parts not
divine. And he seems to call the heaven “a whole,”
and sun, moon, and stars its several parts. Now, certainly
neither Jews nor Christians call the “heaven” God.
Let it be granted, however, that, as he alleges, the heaven is called
God by the Jews, and suppose that sun, moon, and stars are parts
of “heaven,”—which is by no means true, for neither
are the animals and plants upon the earth any portion of it,—how
is it true, even according to the opinions of the Greeks, that if God
be a whole, His parts also are divine? Certainly they say that
the Cosmos taken as the whole4089
is God, the Stoics
calling it the First God, the followers of Plato the Second, and some
of them the Third. According to these philosophers, then, seeing
the whole Cosmos is God, its parts also are divine; so that not only
are human beings
divine, but the whole of the irrational creation, as being
“portions” of the Cosmos; and besides these, the
plants also are divine. And if the rivers, and mountains, and
seas are portions of the Cosmos, then, since the whole Cosmos is God,
are the rivers and seas also gods? But even this the Greeks will
not assert. Those, however, who preside over rivers and seas
(either demons or gods, as they call them), they would term gods.
Now from this it follows that the general statement of Celsus, even
according to the Greeks, who hold the doctrine of Providence, is false,
that if any “whole” be a god, its parts necessarily are
divine. But it follows from the doctrine of Celsus, that if the
Cosmos be God, all that is in it is divine, being parts of the
Cosmos. Now, according to this view, animals, as flies, and
gnats, and worms, and every species of serpent, as well as of birds and
fishes, will be divine,—an assertion which would not be made even
by those who maintain that the Cosmos is God. But the Jews, who
live according to the law of Moses, although they may not know how to
receive the secret meaning of the law, which is conveyed in obscure
language, will not maintain that either the heaven or the angels are
God.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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